Recently widowered and grieving, Gavin flees New York City for the quiet of the country. His new home on Lake Caldasac has surprisingly few visitors, and the author soon learns why: a suspiciously high number of people have gone missing in the small town. The deaths have all been ruled accidents, but Finn Horn, a handicapped boy obsessed with fishing, knows the truth. There’s a monster in the lake. And it wants to feed.

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Publisher's Summary

Recently widowered and grieving, Gavin flees New York City for the quiet of the country. His new home on Lake Caldasac has surprisingly few visitors, and the author soon learns why: a suspiciously high number of people have gone missing in the small town. The deaths have all been ruled accidents, but Finn Horn, a handicapped boy obsessed with fishing, knows the truth. There’s a monster in the lake. And it wants to feed.

Thirteen-year-old Finn, who is dying of cancer, has only one last wish: to go down in the record books for catching a real-life monster. Battling demons of his own, Gavin joins Finn on his perilous quest to slay the nightmarish leviathan.

An homage to the blockbuster Jaws and the classic American novel Moby-Dick, Mannheim Rex is a deep dark thriller that switches seamlessly between heartwarming friendship and heart-stopping action.

Yes, it held my interest and was well written. At times it seemed the author was on the fence between on what kind of story he wanted tell-- it is not exactly a straight horror, monster story. It is multi-layered without being complex. However, if you are squeamish about violence or blood and guts you might want to skip this one. It is not gratuitous but there are some pretty vivid passages.

What other book might you compare Mannheim Rex to and why?

Jaws (the opening scene is unnerving) and a Dean Koontz type villian and mystery.

Have you listened to any of Peter Berkrot’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I don't think so but his reading was fine.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

There were several. Almost every character was flawed in some way including Finn, the tween with cancer and the protagonist, a recently widowed writer who is wallowing in self-pity. This added to the realism of the story. And the sherriff-- a truly evil piece of work.

Yup, I'm a sucker for a monster book/movie, but that doesn't always mean I like it, this one overall wasn’t too bad. Just like in fishing there is a lot of waiting for the good parts to happen, and in the meantime there is a secondary plot with a different type of monster involved. While interesting and I like the characters I'm only going to only give this 3 stars because there was some unnecessary parts to the story that was added that in my opinion detracted from the main story. I felt the story would have been better without it, especially the last five minutes of the book. Also some of the parts with the sheriff could have been deleted, especially the cockroach parts, that just didn't fit the story well. If you liked this book I recommend The Terror by Dan Simmons. Narrator does a good job, easy to listen to.

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